Weathering metal dog tags

Bish

Dito on the dog tags, the set I still have are nearly 20 years old and still good as new.

Rob, Stik, so did you wear yours all the time.

Yes, if I was in uniform, I had dog tags on. Didn't matter if I was in BDUs, Class A, Class B, DCU, ACU, Dress Blues, I wore them. I did not wear them with the PT uniform. When I was at airborne school, a bolt of lightning struck the ground near a group of soldiers, killing one and injuring nearly a dozen. The soldier who died was wearing dog tags and the rest weren't. So I stopped wearing dog tags while doing PT.

Had Dress Blues on today for a wedding, had them on. You'd never see them on me, they are under my T-Shirt, but I will have them on.

We only got them when going on deployment or on overseas exercise. The rest of the time they were held with our documents. I used to wear mine that way as well, I found them very uncomfortable round the neck.

Bish, dog tags are part of the uniform when it uniform. After Jump School I rarely wore them around my neck anymore, but instead usually wore them as proscribed there attached to a belt loop on my uniform pants and tucked into a pocket.

This question struck me as funny. So, I asked a bunch of the Vets in my family how they would do this "weathering"

I won't post the rude answers, lol.  But all of the answers could be boiled down to "my dog tags were self polishing, and the chains were changed when they got gunky".  All did agree that the best way to "weather" them was to get them issued to you and then wear them for anywhere from 4 to 30 years.

You actually won't have anyone seeing them if you are in a faded set of Utilities,,,,they shouldn't be dangling out in plain sight.  I used to have to pay with push-ups (and etc) if mine were hanging out, in fact. Anne says that her Army unit was almost the same.

Dito on the dog tags, the set I still have are nearly 20 years old and still good as new.

Rob, Stik, so did you wear yours all the time.

Likewise, my dog tags issued in 1983 are virtually undamaged. I wore them every day except weekends when I wasn't in uniform. I may have replaced the chain a handful of times in 28 years. Dog tags are worn inside of the uniform, between your chest and the T-shirt. Even the spare tags I wore inside the laces of my boot are still basically pristine.

As for the BDU, have you looked at local flea markets? In Kentucky they are called peddlers malls. Many of the booths have old BDU and ACU uniforms that are already worn.

My dog tags are 30 years old and still pretty shiny to this date...They would get a bit funky after extended time in the field but the metal that they are made from wiped clean pretty quickly. The chains are a different matter as those get funky quickly, but they also tend to have a short service life and needed replacement regularly. At least mine did over the course of my career. As far as fading the BDUs, repeated washing with bleach will fade them.